After spending Wednesday of our journey in Nauvoo, we drove several hours to sleep near a very religious university. I never knew I wanted to see Notre Dame, but when we discovered it was between Nauvoo and Kirtland, I was suddenly very curious. It seemed like it would be a good place to stop for the night.
Here's some proof we were there.
I didn't even get pictures of the really gorgeous parts of campus. We were running late and couldn't spend much time wandering around, but trust me, it was very pretty.
From there we made our way to our final planned church history stop: Kirtland, OH. Kirtland was part of my brother's mission and he had sent me a short list of things to see. Unfortunately, I didn't plan well enough and we arrived in Kirtland a few hours after everything had closed. We still got to drive around the Temple.
It was interesting being near the Kirtland Temple so soon after the Nauvoo Temple. The Kirtland Temple is not being used as a temple, it's open to tourists and is not owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It felt like a building, an old building with a lot of wonderful history, but just a building. The Nauvoo Temple is a dedicated building, a house of God. Just being on the grounds you can feel the Spirit. The difference between the Nauvoo Temple and the Kirtland Temple is tangible.
After driving around the Temple we got back on the road. Detouring to Kirtland took us away from the Interstate which meant we took lots of winding paths to travel the few hours to our hotel for the night. It was during this leg of the journey that the kids were introduced to something brand new: Amish people. We saw several families walking along the road at dusk and a handful of reflector-covered horse-drawn buggies sharing the road. My children were fascinated. We had a long talk in the car about why someone would eschew technology.
We crossed over into western Pennsylvania and stayed in a hotel that was nice but out in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. We had to drive around in the dark for a while just to find the entrance to the parking lot. We could see the hotel, but like a mirage in the desert, we couldn't get there.
Friday was spent driving through Pennsylvania. We were all excited when we crossed the Delaware and entered New Jersey. That night we finally made it to our new house.
I like visiting states I've never been to before and I was able to cross more off my list. Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio were all new to me. Given another opportunity to move across the country (which is something I hope doesn't happen anytime soon) I'm not sure I would drive. It was a long week of being in the car and we relied far too much on watching movies on my laptop as we traveled. We also listened to several audio books (Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, Age 8, all the Fancy Nancy books, among others) and I enjoyed that, but wow, that was a long road trip. On the other hand, I really enjoyed seeing all of our friends and family, so maybe I would drive if I could see so many people that I love.
Just before driving up to our new neighborhood, Bryan took us to a scenic overlook. New Jersey is really a lovely state.
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